True Life Tale: Telepathic Updates

User believe mind readers are hired at the help desk.

06/01/2004

I had a user call up to query why his Symantec AV wasn't updating with the latest virus definition files. I explained he either had to use the LiveUpdate option or the scheduled updates to schedule Symantec to download the updates at a given time automatically.

The user said that he had set all the PCs to update via a scheduled update at 6 p.m. each evening.

I said, "I assume you just lock your PCs each night," to which he replied, "Oh, no, we turn them all off, old boy, to save power."

I nearly fell off my chair laughing and spent the next 10 minutes explaining that the PCs must be turned on to physically download the updates.

[The preceding "True Life Tale" was submitted by Roy Partington, of Swindon, England, as part of a Help Desk Support contest we ran in January/February. For his effort, Roy received a copy of The Ultimate Windows Server 2003 System Administrator's Guide, by Robert Williams and Mark Walla, courtesy of Addison-Wesley. To submit a "True Life Tale," send you 500-words-or-less story on any IT topic to mdomingo@101com.com. Published tales will win a book from our burgeoning tech library.]